Normal Editions Workshop turns 50 this year. To celebrate, University Galleries launched a large-scale exhibition with prominent prints from throughout the past five decades.
Normal Editions interim director Morgan Price curated the exhibition, with input from University Galleries staff and ISU alumni.
Price studied printmaking at the University of Denver and Wichita State. He joined the faculty in 2012.
“I knew about the reputation of ISU before coming to work here,” he said.
Two decades ago, Price attended a printmaking conference organized around Normal Editions’ 30th anniversary. In 50 years, he’s just the fifth person to run Normal Editions Workshop. He sees himself as a newcomer—relatively speaking.
“Collaborative printshops like this are—there are a number of them around the country but there’s not a lot,” Price said. “It’s a pretty distinctive thing.”
The collaborative part, Price said, is a big part of that distinction.
“The workshop handles the technical side of printing, but you’re also bringing in artists who are not necessarily printmakers,” he said. “Having a shop like this connected to the school is not just about having exciting prints happening. It’s about having really exciting artists who are present here.”
On Feb. 13, Price will moderate a panel discussion with previous Normal Editions directors Richard Finch, James D. Butler and Veda Rives Aukerman. Inaugural director Steve Britko led the Workshop for just one year.
The milestone follows shortly on the heels of several other big developments for the Wonsook Kim College of Fine Arts, not least of which is the long-anticipated groundbreaking on a major capital project building new art facilities and updating several others.
University Galleries marked its own golden anniversary a few years ago, dedicating an entire room to David Wojnarowicz. In 1990, then-director and chief curator Barry Blinderman hosted Wojnarowicz for a first-ever survey exhibition called Tongues of Flame. As part of his residency, Wojnarowicz participated in several collaborative print projects, two of which—inspired by the natural elements of earth, wind, fire and water—are included in this current exhibition.
Price said the longstanding kinship between Normal Editions and University Galleries has been a particularly fruitful one. Several exhibiting artists complemented their time in Normal with a collaborative print project. Among those are works by Avantika Bawa, Bethany Collins and Nazafarin Lotfi, included in the current exhibition—artists whose connection to ISU began with University Galleries.
Others are names deeply familiar with followers of Bloomington-Normal’s art scene—Harold Boyd, who pioneered the MFA art program at ISU; college namesake Wonsook Kim; Rhea Edge, who owns an independent print shop in Bloomington; Harold Gregor and Ken Holder.
“Some people who have works in the show do have a printmaking background. Most don’t,” said Price. “That’s one of the really exciting things. The workshop team, we handle all of the technical sides of the printing. An artist can come not knowing anything about printmaking.”
Price said each collaboration starts with a conversation.
“What do you want to make? What are you excited to do? We look at the mechanics of, how can that be done? How can we make something that is sometimes beyond what they even imagined.”
Vastly different from reproductions of today, printmaking employs a variety of techniques to transfer a piece of art from one medium—a stone plate or woodcarving, for example—to another. Prints are made in multiples, but each is hand-crafted. And templates are destroyed after each edition is printed, preventing duplication of those multiples, which at Normal Editions is limited to about 40 or 50 prints.
“A lot the processes that are on display in this gallery have their origins in commercial production from 150 to 5, 600 years ago,” Price said. “But they’re not ones that are really in current commercial use, in part because they are very labor intensive and involve a very hands-on, direct approach.”
Many, many student hands contributed to each project, whose names are too numerous to list on a gallery label. One of those is Lisa Lofgren, University Galleries’ registrar and a master printer operating in Bloomington. She was a graduate student intern at Normal Editions Workshop when they created Rudy Pozzatti’s The Twelve Labors of Hercules, a series of 13 original, limited edition lithographs created in 2009 and 2010.
“That whole series lasted most of my time studying as a grad student,” Lofgren said.
A selection from the series, a two-colored lithograph called Cerberus, is included in the 50th anniversary exhibition. Fitting the project into a cohorts two-year timeline was a challenge, particularly given Pozzatti wasn’t the only artist working with Normal Editions in that era.
“All the drawings were done. It was all set for the printing phases—for the most part,” Lofgren said. “He just passed away about five years ago, in his 90s.”
“It’s something he had been thinking about for much of his professional career and hadn’t had the time and the scope to be able to create,” said Price. “So, it was really something he thought of for a very long time.”
Collaboration in Progress: Normal Editions Workshop at 50 is on view through March 25 at University Galleries, 11 Uptown Circle. The gallery is free and open to the public. For a list of supplementary programming, including the Feb. 13 reception and panel discussion with James D. Butler, Richard Finch and Veda Rives Auckerman, visit galleries.illinoisstate.edu.
